restaurant-automation
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Stephen Klein
Stephen Klein is the co-founder and CEO of Hyphen, a San Jose food-robotics company that builds the automated Makeline - a hybrid manual-and-robotic assembly system that runs beneath the counter to build bowls and plates at up to 350 meals per hour. A self-described foodservice fanatic since childhood, Klein started a text-to-order frozen yogurt business in college, helped scale Instacart in its early days, and ran operations at robotic coffee bar Cafe X before launching Hyphen in 2020 with co-founder Daniel Fukuba. Hyphen has since drawn investment from Tiger Global, Chipotle and Cava and deployed systems with chains and foodservice operators across the country.
William Wang
William Wang is the founder and CEO of MenuSifu, a New York-based restaurant technology company that started by dragging Asian restaurant owners off paper order pads and onto cloud point-of-sale, and now runs an AI-and-automation ecosystem serving 15,000-plus restaurants across all 50 states. Built 'by restaurant people, for restaurant people,' MenuSifu closed a $40 million Series B in 2025 and is pushing into kitchen robotics, smart beverage automation, payments and restaurant financing.
Yu Li
Yu Li is the co-founder and COO of MenuSifu, the New York restaurant technology company that has become the top point-of-sale provider for Asian restaurants in North America. Starting in 2013 as a POS system for independent Asian restaurants, MenuSifu has grown into an integrated ecosystem of payments, online ordering, financing, and AI-driven automation serving more than 15,000 restaurants across all 50 states. Under Yu Li's operating leadership the company raised a $40 million Series B in 2025, powers MIXUE's U.S. expansion, and Yu Li himself was featured on the Nasdaq Times Square billboard as part of the 2025 Asia Milestone Makers Cohort.
Umut Isik
Umut Isik is the co-founder and CEO of Incept AI, a New York voice-AI company that takes drive-thru and phone orders in the noisiest places on earth. A former algebraic geometer turned Principal Applied Scientist at AWS, he spent years building neural networks that pull a single human voice out of acoustic chaos. He also makes mathematical art from simple functions. Incept AI raised a $3M pre-seed led by Rally Ventures in February 2025 and claims 95-97%+ order accuracy with no human in the loop.